I translate photographs into paintings that call attention to implicit political and social narratives transcribed in the built environment. The architectural image is represented in my work to introduce a dialogue about changing political power structures, (failed) utopias, the impacts of ideological struggles, war, and natural upheavals.
I am interested in the highly symbolic role architecture plays in politics and its power to function as an icon of our lived experience, a portrait of an existential phenomenology whose features manifest where society is at one particular moment in history.
My paintings point to the shifting of the significance and meaning in both images of places and the places themselves. My interest in the potential divergence and duality of images and the media’s role in covering and presenting issues to the public is closely tied to a pictorial architecture, and its ability to act as an icon for political, religious, and social systems and beliefs. I collect and appropriate photographs I find on the Internet and in newspapers, in response to radio and television broadcasts, and through research and reading. The mediated image is painted in order to invest the picture with the capability to function as a signifier and seeks to evoke meaning and discourse.
My painting process developed from my background in printmaking- specifically screen printing and intaglio. My process begins with a sourced image or a photograph I take in response to my research. The source image is manipulated and scaled in photoshop, printed out to the size I envision the painting to be, and then traced and redrawn on an aluminum composite panel covered with a translucent vinyl mask. The resulting line drawing is cut out by hand using an exacto knife and colors are mixed in reference to the source image using Golden fluid acrylic paints and mediums. The image is then transcribed into paint employing a multi layered masking and stenciling process that involves the meticulous cutting out of shapes and the application of paint with a squeegee.
